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Surging Forward

By Kate Phillips December 21, 2006 12:32 pmDecember 21, 2006 12:32 pm

With a troop surge for Iraq on the table, and with Defense Secretary Bob Gates meeting with military commanders in Baghdad, talk of winning and losing the war remains part of the overall backdrop to the unrelenting violence there.

The Times’s Jim Rutenberg talked to experts on language and the military about President Bush’s shifting themes, with the latest being:
“We’re not winning. We’re not losing.”

White House officials say that in this war there are insurgents attacking other insurgents as well as counterinsurgents; there are terrorists, armed gangsters and an occupying force — the United States-led coalition — all fighting each other too, and so the usual rules and definitions do not apply.
In short: a dizzying mix of forces in Iraq has resulted in a dizzying mix of definitions of winning and losing as the administration has sought to recalibrate expectations for a public that was initially promised a swift victory and now just seems to want to hear it straight.

“When they say, ‘We’re not winning; we’re not losing,’ that’s being ‘realistic,’ ” said William Safire, whose column, “On Language,” appears in The New York Times Magazine. “And ‘realistic’ is a word that’s being kicked around now,” he said.

Dana Milbank at The Washington Post considered the choice of the Indian Treaty Room for the location of the president’s news conference:

The setting for the event, the rarely used Indian Treaty Room in the old Executive Office Building next to the White House, was inadvertently symbolic. Once a reception room for the Navy, it had stars on the ceiling for navigation, a compass in the center of the floor and other devices used by those who have lost their way.

From Baghdad, The Times’s David Cloud reported that Mr. Gates said that his talks with military commanders revealed concerns they have that a surge might delay Iraq’s ability to handle its own security.

Mr. Gates said his talks with Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top ground commander in Iraq, and Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American commander for the Middle East, included discussions of “the possibility of a surge and the potential for what it might accomplish.”

But at a news conference with Mr. Gates standing next to him, General Casey indicated that he wanted to see a more thorough plan for how the additional troops would be used before he would endorse the idea.

“Additional troops have to be for a purpose,” the general said. “I’m not necessarily opposed to the idea, but what I want to see happen is, if we do bring more American troops here, they help us progress toward our strategic objectives.”

Several months ago Iran’s president spoke about the “143,000 hostages” that he was holding in Iraq. He was, of course, referring to our troops. This was a very important statement. It was about that time when I fantasized about what it would be like to see all the troops, weapons and money redirected to humanitarian relief. Then U2 and Green Day did showed that fantasy in their “The Saints are Coming” video.

The report that “of the 500,000 weapons, including rocket propelled grenades, which we sent to arm the new Iraqi National Police and Army only about 43,000 can be accounted for” was another important fact. We armed the people shooting at our sons and daughters. Label them any way you wish, insurgents, counter insurgents, armed gangsters, Baathists, Al Qaeda, Islamo-fascists, it really does not matter to the young American on the ground there. Yes, I believe we may need to “surge” our troop level enough to safely get the bulk of our troops to the Baghdad airport and out of hell, BUT…guess what? Violence does not work.

If there is a religious element to this whole debacle, if this is the “ideological battle of the 21st Century”, if this overtly professing “christian” president really read the Bible or the newspapers then he would realize as we all should that non violence will appear to lose and inevitably win.

I believe it was, oh yes, Jesus of Nazareth who said, “Love your enemy”. And to think, the neo-cons used His name to get elected and kill all those people.

The entire thrust in Iraq has been in pursuit of ‘our strategic objectives’, a goal which appears to be ill defined on purpose to allow constant changes in those objectives. With this as a backdrop, there is a strong likelyhood once the Iraqi’s do stand up and pacify their country,we will again change ‘our stragegic objectives’ to meddle in the governance of the new order. Iraq was created by Western powers, and it is likely it will never be stable without continued influence of a ruthless dictator or a dominating Western Power. It’s my sense the sooner the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds are separated into three separate states, the sooner there will be stablilty and we can bring our troops home without being responsible for an internal blood bath.

According to the adminerstation since we’ve been in Iraq we’ve been winning but the news has been how many troops has been lost and how many Iraq citizens have lost their lives. Now we come to we aren’t winning but we aren’t loosing. The Iraq government has all our money they need to meet their needs, as long as our forces stay there they will be safe. Until the Iraq government gets the word they must step up and settle their problems, no more money or troops. When Iraq finds this I am sure they will do what needs to be done. When we say you have this long to get your ducks in order because we will be history at this time, I’m sure they will do what needs to be done.

Geez, wonder why the re-enlistment rates are at 70% and even higher for serving an additonal tour in Iraq? Would our servicemen that are actually there maybe have a better idea of what’s going on than our media and public?
Problem is, Americans read the headlines and little else. God Forbid anyone would ever read a book and learn something about the region, religion and people. President Bush is right but America is not, like the British, adept at “nation building.” We are, however, learning.
That said, we should have realized that and talked with historic “nation builders” like the U.K. a lot more in advance.
Still, when all is said and done, our President’s decision to oust Saddam was correct.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

In the spring of 2004, they came to work at the CPA to be among us to work for a chance to grow from the heated prison that Baghdad had become. It was obvious to those of us who came there without the shade of conservative ideology or the mercenary opportunism or the inward and upward view of the civil service professional that unless we assumed responsibility for order and security within a seriously and deliberately fractured society our blood and their treasure would yield a whirlwind that we all would inherit. Our ethics should lead us back to taking the actions and installing the generalship that will reestablish the civil society there. To do this we must commit more of our blood and treasure contributed by all levels of our society, otherwise we will be haunted by the souls of those who came to join us three years ago and hunted by the murderers we left to mobilize an oil funded islamic jihad.

Production Sharing Agreements currently have not assumed any place whatsoever in the national conversation over Iraq.

Production Sharing Agreements guarantee American oil companies long-term profits in exchange for investing in the development of Iraqi resources.

Production Sharing Agreements are not bad in and of themselves. However, Bush made the major business coup of obtaining them in Iraq . . . even having them guaranteed in Iraq’s Constitution . . yet never, ever talks about them to the American public.

That same Iraqi Constitution makes Sharia THE main source of Iraqi law. As Sharia calls for gay people to be killed, gays are routinely murdered by gangs in the streets and it is not even a crime by Iraqi Constitutional standards.

That is the “democracy” for which our national treasure is being squandered and our soldiers’ lives wasted.

Brazil has converted 100% to alternate fuels; we should follow suit. The Bush family fortunes grow from the oil trade; W has no motivation to convert to alternate fuels.

It couldn’t be more obvious that what’s going on in Iraq is a civil war between Shiite and Sunni, who hate each other as much as each hates Jews and Christians. The Kurds in the north have long expressed a desire for a separate country.

Bush, the conniving monster who sent Colin Powell to the UN to talk about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, wants to stay in Iraq for the long haul because he wants to see the full fruits of the Production Sharing Agreements he obtained.

I’d like to see a surge take place, 20,000 or so troops to reduce the violence. But not in Iraq. Send them to Darfur where they could do some good, protecting humanitarian aid workers and refugees in camps.

I am amazed that, after the results of the November election, the deployment of yet more troops to Iraq and a long term increase in the size of the Army should even be on the table. Ballooning military expenditure has so distorted the Federal budget since 2003 that the infrastructure of American science and medicine has been undermined, perhaps irreversibly. I write as a cancer researcher who has watched important initiatives to address melanoma, lung cancer, breast cancer, lymphoma and pancreatic cancer all fail for lack of funds. Every demographic group in America has been affected, from young children with leukemia to elders with colon cancer. All corners of the country are suffering. Basically, funds that were intended for cancer cures and research have been used instead for ammunition. What is this business of America “prevailing” in Baghdad when we are failing our own citizens so miserably at home? Brave Americans, who not in uniform but who have cancer, will be paying for this failure with their lives.

It’s interesting watching American politics from a distance. The mid term congressional elections register a massive protest on the handling of the Iraq War (Harb Bush on the Arab Street). The US Government turns to the ISG, who say with conviction “It’s not working”. A short period of quiet on this front, when the murmur of massive haggling can almost be heard from Australia, and then we learn that the whole complex issue has been simplified to a narrow “trilemma”, “get out, get long or get big”. Then we find that the most likely response is the “surge” (ie “more of the same). But wait! Didn’t the ISG initially say this wasn’t working. I would have thought that you, and us, deserved better, but then Cicero said, sao they say, that a democracy gets the government it deserves.

President Obama drew criticism on Thursday when he said, “we don’t have a strategy yet,” for military action against ISIS in Syria. Lawmakers will weigh in on Mr. Obama’s comments on the Sunday shows.Read more…